With account of modern optoelectronics global trends brief review is presented for on - board (air - born and space - born) optoelectronic equipment, including monolithic optoelectronic devices designated for different purposes, including fiber - optic systems, navigation systems, focal plane arrays, visualization means. Different materials and technologies are used for this purpose. It's stressed that the problems of perspective on - board equipment can't be adequately solved without integrated optoelectronics and the main attention is paid for monolithic devices including those obtained by silicon on sapphire (SOS) technology. It's noted that earlier A2B6 and A3B5 compounds have been used correspondingly for photosensitive and light - emitting devices fabrication and now with the development of new technologies of quantum - confined photodetectors based on A3B5 and of efficient A2B6 - based light emitters applications boundary is more and more smearing. It's supposed that this trend will be enhanced allowing to fabricate new types of monolithic optoelectronic devices. It's stressed that one of the main problems of future optoelectronics will be the problem of heteroepitaxial growth of lattice mismatched device structures, the most promising substrates being silicon and sapphire.